


Hiding From the Dawn

by Myzic



Series: Whumptober 2020 [14]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Fever, Gen, Hallucinations, Natural Disasters, Not Beta Read, Sick Characters, Whumptober 2020, descriptions of injuries/pain, i am hesitant to tag with fluff?, smol bit of that, they're vespa's, we die like hyperion mayors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:21:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27258604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Myzic/pseuds/Myzic
Summary: Vespa glanced in the mirror at her side, and the sandstorm unfurled behind them. It was enormous, a massive thicket of glowing grains that moved in an almost sluggish manner, until you squinted, and saw the flow of glinting red sand that shifted against the desert. The giant cloud of its glowing, ethereal form was mesmerizing, deadly, and it was gaining on them.They were already driving on top of the molten sand at the bike’s fastest gear, and she could do nothing but will them forward at even greater speeds.Then, the sandstorm consumed them.
Relationships: Vespa Ilkay & Juno Steel
Series: Whumptober 2020 [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1956226
Comments: 4
Kudos: 44





	Hiding From the Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> I combined my complete lack of knowledge about both science and weather to make this abomination!
> 
> There are some descriptions of pain/injuries here. Also, Vespa hallucinates, as you do.

The dust of the desert was irritating, searing and hot as they drove, the swirling motes of sand that got kicked up behind them not helping endear her to the hot Martian desert. It was weird to be back on Mars so soon after they left in the first place, and Vespa twisted the throttle. The faster they got to Olympus Mons, the faster this job would be over.

Her motorcycle revved comfortably underneath them, and for a second, she felt good, satisfied almost with the familiar purr of it as she raced forwards. The desert wasn’t so bad when you were racing to leave it behind, as miles were torn away from beneath you in seconds. Arms clamped around her jacket as she accelerated, tight around her ribs.

“If you don’t slow down, I’m gonna throw chunks!” Steel shouted past the wind, and she could have growled for the feeling of his helmet knocking against the back of hers. “Vespa, we don’t need to be there for another three hours, you can  _ slow down _ ! Please!” His voice squeaked irritatingly in her ear.

“If I hear you so much as retch, Steel, you’ll be a lot more than a little car sick,” She shot back but slowed a little as she spoke. Couldn’t have his weak countenance messing up the mission. Vespa was looking forward to punching Brock Canopus’ face in, the bastard. They were being sent in as part of Bud’s new ‘Buddy’ system, to pose as potential fences for the suitcase strapped to the back of the bike. Problem was that the only thing she liked about the ‘Buddy’ system was its name. 

But she’d put up with Steel as long as Vespa got to cave this guy’s face in. What the Board of Fresh Starts was doing on Mars was illegal, but not illegal enough for Hyperion to give a shit about what happened in the Cerberus Province, which is where this guy came in, finding the desperate and dying and promising medical aid. 

And Vespa was going to drive her blade through his skull. The image brought a grin to her face and for a moment, the drive was bearable again.

Juno opened his big, fat mouth and ruined her peace. “It’s kind of cloudy out today, huh?”

“That’s great. There’s nothing I’d rather do right now than make small talk about the weather with you,” She grounded out, “Like drive in silence.”

“No, I mean there’s a lot of clouds, aren’t there?” At a glance, it was a little cloudy, but it wasn’t like an overcast sky ever stopped anyone, “And the sand’s pretty hot right now…” 

“Say what you wanna say, Steel.”

Steel spoke quickly and she tried to let his worry slide off her back before she could start panicking too. “Look, are we sure it isn’t going to rain?” What was he on about? A few clouds never stopped anyone. Unless they rained in the middle of summer. Which it was.

They had checked the forecast going into this job, though, seeing as not checking it when it was this hot out was asking for third-degree burns in some problematic places. “We looked earlier this morning, there wasn’t anything—”

_ Smeck _

Something hit the pane of her visor and Vespa cut herself off mid-sentence.

_ Smecksmack smecksmeck smack _

“God fucking dammit,” She swore. That was… bad. Really bad. There was nothing but sand and desert around them for miles and they were still an hour from Olympus Mons, their pickup site long since faded behind them. Nothing but sand for miles was fine  _ before _ it started raining— in fact, she preferred it. Made it easier to tell when her hallucinations formed big fuck-off monsters in the sand for her to swerve around as Steel shrieked in her ear— but now, when what they needed was shelter, preferably the domed kind, it was like a death sentence.

“Those cliff sides over there,” Juno yelled at her, “we can see if there’s any caves in the canyon!” That was probably their best chance at escaping the meltdown and Vespa didn’t protest at the suggestion, merely leaning forward and turning a sharp right straight toward the cliffs. They were probably still five minutes away, but depending on how quickly the rain came down… She would just need to be fast. Real fast. 

It began to come down harder, pelting against her helmet which protected her from the acid sting. But it wasn’t the actual water she was wary of.

“Keep your eye on the sand,” She called back, zipping to the top of a particularly tall dune and forcing her weight to the front of the bike, “tell me how fast it’s heating up!”

“Um,” he yelled back, which was a complete waste of air, “pretty fast. How durable are our tires?” Vespa didn’t really need him to say it. The sand around them had started to glitter, sparkling like flickering light bulbs, and going from a dull red to a neon hue. 

The desert around them was beginning to glow with the burning orange and red of a sunset, which might be nice to look at  _ if they weren’t in the middle of it _ . The Eos Plains were nice to look at from behind the safety of a dome, but less so when that protective measure didn’t extend to you. She’d seen some nasty burns when she was in the Cerberus Province, dotted across people’s limbs like shiny pink freckles and their feet white as the molten specks of glass in the sand burned away their skin to the muscle. And that was with a few minutes of contact— those who were unfortunate enough to not take cover in hollowed out shelters and spaces.

Vespa remembered why she hated Mars now.

“I’ve got some…” He hesitated, but then worked up the nerve behind her “Bad news!”

“Besides the Plains of Dawn coming to eat our entire asses!” She shouted back, already disliking where he was going with this.

“I think there’s a sandstorm coming up,” He turned, shoulders pressing to her back as Steel craned his neck. “That, or the largest tumbleweed I’ve ever seen!”

There was a cave, maybe a kilometre away from them at this point, just a crevice in the craggy outcropping of the cliffs, and Vespa shot toward it, no plan in mind other than ‘get the hell out of here.’ Steel’s arms moved up from around her stomach— and she wished he was still clinging to his seat like the frightened amateur he was at the beginning of the ride— moving over her shoulders. Vespa figured he was getting a better grip out of fear, and didn’t growl at him to let go the way all of her years of instincts were telling her to.

Vespa glanced in the mirror at her side, and the sandstorm unfurled behind them. It was enormous, a massive thicket of glowing grains that moved in an almost sluggish manner, until you squinted, and saw the flow of glinting red sand that shifted against the desert. The giant cloud of its glowing, ethereal form was mesmerizing, deadly, and it was  _ gaining on them _ .

They were already driving on top of the molten sand at the bike’s fastest gear, and she could do nothing but will them forward at even greater speeds.

Then, the sandstorm consumed them. Within seconds, her vision was almost completely obscured by the foggy mist of sand that flew through the air like so many fireflies. Fireflies that burned when they made contact. The uncovered skin of her wrists stung, but her back was mostly untouched by the haze of heat that settled along her forearms in blooming wounds. 

Steel was covering her with his back, hands reaching over her shoulders to cover the most amount of surface area he could reach, and Vespa wanted to snap at him to quit it out. She did her best to ignore the winces and occasional wheeze of pain in her ears in favour of the slow dots of superheated sand stuck to the front of her visor and took a hard stop in front of the cave. She didn’t even need to turn the engine of the bike off as it sputtered its last breath beneath them

“C’mon, Steel!” She swung a leg over the bike, and then she was running, legs pumping as fast as she could make them, not letting her feet make contact with the sand for more than it took for her to spring forward. “Get your shit together and fucking run!” The sand kicked up around her legs and Vespa gritted her teeth as it did, ignoring the tiny seeds of pain dotting her calves as the grains turned her pant legs into tatters.

The rain stung her open burns, but the inside of the cave was for the most part, blissfully sand free as it wound deeper into the cliffs. Steel’s steps came in close behind her, and they ran further down the winding path.

Maybe twenty feet in or so, the thin trail widened to form a mouth. She began to step in, relieved, but froze. Scales glimmered in the dimness of the cave, long lithe body curled into a tightly wound pile. A snake, enormous and likely also seeking refuge from the storm outside. As long as they didn’t disturb it… but they didn’t know how venomous it was, how aggressive or protective of its hiding spot. 

Another thing about Mars— the vermin were monstrous. They had to be to survive the lethal environment, and most of them had adapted to do so by being even more deadly. 

The body at her back pushed past where she had gone still in the lip of the cavern. “ _ Steel _ ,” Vespa hissed at him, trying to prevent his untimely death against her better instincts that argued it was just natural selection at this point.

He flopped to the ground against the cave wall, pulling off his helmet, and groaned. “What? Can’t a lady get a bit of rest after running for his life?” Steel lifted a leg and pulled off a shoe, grumbling something about the soles, and far too cavalier for being sat next to a snake not ten feet away. 

At least this problem wasn’t one that would leave scores of scars up her legs for later. Vespa squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. Once. Twice.

The snake wasn’t there when she opened them. Vespa huffed a breath that sounded more like a sigh even to her, pulled off her own helmet, and started to get closer to Steel’s position against the wall. She reached for his back, and he pulled away giving her a deer-in-the-headlights look.

“I’m trying to take a look at your injuries.” She said, reaching to pull his back toward her unhesitantly, “Medic, remember?” 

He let her with a few weak protests, more for the sake of it than any real resistance she guessed. Vespa didn’t wince at the sight of his back, but it wasn’t a pleasant sight by any means, and it made her own legs flare with pain as she looked at it. Steel’s jacket was full of holes, the few places on his back where skin showed through the layers of cloth, pockmarked by weeping red blisters.

If she had fresh water, Vespa would’ve rinsed out the burns, but as it was, she hadn’t exactly stopped to grab the water from the bike outside. Or her first-aid kit. Both of which would be useless by now, not that she planned on worsening her wounds by subjecting herself to more of the hellscape outside.

“Don’t lean against the wall,” She instructed, bending her legs up so only the pads of her shoes were on the ground, “and keep your legs bent like this. We’re gonna have to minimize skin contact with all the surfaces in here. I don’t know how long it’s gonna be before Bud can come get us and we can’t risk infection until then.”

“I’m trying a call to tell—” a high pitched beep exuded from the comms on Steel’s ear. “Uh. No signal, then. Unless that means they’re on another call? Yeah, no, it’s a no go.”

“Coulda told you that,” she snorted.

“It’s not like I’ve ever been in this situation before,” he snapped back, “give me a break. I’m on a learning curve.”

“What, you've never been stuck outside the precious safety of your dome before?” No survival skills, no common sense, not enough restraint to hold his tongue when he should. Vespa inhaled and reminded herself that she trusted Bud and that she had brought on the others for a reason.

“I have, actually, just not during a sandstorm. Don’t see why anyone would  _ want  _ to be,” he snarked and the urge to punch him in the mouth rushed over her.

“Well, not everyone gets that option, Steel. Hyperion sure doesn’t seem to give a shit about anything outside its big blue fishbowl.” For someone who’d lived on Mars his whole life, he sure didn’t seem to know a lot about the miserable hunk of rock.  _ City slickers _ , she thought unkindly.

“What do you mean?” His voice went from defensive to warily curious.

“The Cerberus Province doesn’t have a dome.” Vespa said reluctantly, “ It doesn’t have a nice big barrier to protect it from the Eos Plains.”

A pause, a little regretful, even with the dim red lighting from outside their shelter. “That’s— that’s shitty. I hadn’t thought about it before, what that meant.” 

“You and everyone else in the city.” The dotted burns had started to ache like little throbbing heartbeats and she resisted the urge to scratch at them. “God, this planet is such a shithole.”

“Yeah,” he agreed after a second, sounding like there was an open well of emotion behind that single word confirming, denying, and contradicting it all at the same time. It was too bad for Steel she didn’t care enough to ask.

Except she was curious. A little. Steel liked to spout vulnerability during rough times, and she didn’t know if he was always that way, but it couldn’t hurt to get a better idea of what made him tick. Weaknesses for her contingencies.

And if Vespa had to sit here for another second while Steel made those brooding eyes, irrationally loud in the silence, she was going to eviscerate him before the infection did any real harm.

So, she said, “Wow, you  _ sure _ ? Sounding real confident over there.”

“It’s… complicated.” Steel began like he was winding up to something long and overly wordy, “The city seems like a haven to others. You could even say it’s beautiful, with an abundance of citizens just going about their day in a clamour of bustling bodies, people that all pretend to know what they’re doing, where they’re going—”

“You know what?” Vespa cut him off. Fuck weaknesses, she wasn’t sitting through this. “I’ve changed my mind, I really don’t care.”

“Right.” Steel said, and they sat in the silence of the cave, listening to the hissing and sputtering of acidic rain outside.

~

The crew didn’t come for them the next day. Vespa woke up at some point in the morning, neck sore from being craned over her knees as she slept, and ravenous. Steel too, going by the violent gurgling noises emerging from his stomach in the spot he was crouched in. They were going to need food at some point. By now, the Carte Blanche couldn’t have missed their no-show for the meeting with Canopus, so they would be on the lookout, but how fast they were picked up would depend on whether the storm let up. The ship’s defenses were good, but not good enough to fly through a storm of molten glass.

Vespa trekked outside the cavern to check for any let-up in the rain, maybe some small mammals that wandered near that they could turn into possible meals. She didn’t need to go far, which was lucky for her legs. They bled with the soft scabs that reopened when she moved. It was less lucky for their potential rescue, as the acid rain continued to pour, and she felt the heat of the desert outside from where she had stopped at the floating strings of glittering sand. 

The combination of moisture from the acid rain and melting sand turned the air muggy, uncomfortably humid and moist as she breathed it in.

Steel hadn’t shifted much from where she last saw him, huddled tight, knees to his chest, and head against the wall. Vespa gestured at him to get closer, intending on seeing how bad his burns had gotten, any signs of early infection.

“Let me see your back.” Steel shuffled over and she lifted his shirt as he hissed in pain. “Quit the whining you wuss. The more moaning you do the worse it seems,” He twitched away from her hands as she turned his upper torso, surveying the burns in the harder to reach areas, “and it doesn’t make my job easier when you aggravate your injuries.”

“I’m not  _ whining _ ,” he whined, “Just readjusting. Getting comfortable.”

“Sure. You let me know how that works for you,” Vespa said sardonically. They fell back into silence, as Steel seemed to struggle under her eyes, either from the discomfort of his injuries or a desire to say something. She hoped it was from the injuries that had turned a pale yellow around the edges of his scabs. 

They were infected despite their efforts, which she probably could have guessed based on the feverish warmth building behind her own eyes. It was just pretty fucking difficult when everything was hot and you couldn’t tell when your hot was too hot.

Steel seemed to work up the nerve to say his piece. “There’s nothing about Mars you liked? Places, experiences, people?” Apparently, he still wanted to talk.  _ Great _ .

Vespa thought of Buddy, the long hours of recovery when she would wake up in a cold sweat,  _ sure _ the woman beside her was a hallucination right up until fingertips were running soothingly along her back. How the nightmarish prison she had thought of as the Cerberus Province had slowly become a haven in the cream walls and sure words of Buddy Aurinko. 

She almost would have dismissed it all as a dream, too good to be real, if not for the odd stranger in the crowd with her father’s face, the cruel words Vespa heard briefly from Siquliak before she realized he was far too much of a pacifist to be so aggressive. 

But that was none of Steel’s goddamn business.

“I’m not a native, Steel,” She shot him down, “and if I had any choice about where I wanted to settle down it sure as hell wouldn’t be here. I’m not the one with any ties to the place. Don’t exactly have relatives to come back for.”

For a long moment Vespa thought that would be it.

“Me neither.” His response was quiet, spoken lightly into the space between them.

The hell was she supposed to with that?

“That’s rough,” Vespa said awkwardly. She struggled for a moment. They could keep sitting here in this strange silence they’d made… or Vespa could… make conversation. She wished briefly that her knives weren’t being eaten by the desert so she could end her misery sooner rather than later. “I,” she started haltingly, “don’t have any relatives left behind. Didn’t have much to begin with to start. It’s— Bud’s my family now.”

“What were your relatives like?” His question seemed to spill out unbidden before his mind caught up and Steel tried to backtrack, “Wait, you don’t have to answer that if you don’t want to. I get it if it’s, um, hard.”

“The one I knew was a shitty old bastard,” Vespa grimaced at the thought of him, “and once he was gone I didn’t really care about everything else I left behind.” She left out the part about killing him. Everything about Steel read like he might protest at that and she didn’t want to have to deal with his integrity in such close captivity.

“Yeah. Uh, It was just me, my Ma, and my brother for a while,” He spoke quietly, and something about the wobble in his tone told her he didn’t relish the deaths the way she did her father’s. “Gone now. The both of them.” Vespa didn’t ask what happened, returning his favour.

“Sorry,” She said instead.

Juno breathed a surprised huff through his nose— which, uncalled for. “It’s been a while, but thanks. I got Rita though, and Mick Mercury should be around here somewhere. And Peter now, so I guess they’re— yeah. I’ve got my family.” His tone turned embarrassed and he kept speaking, “And I guess Buddy keeps saying we’re all family now, so there’s that too.”

“Sure,” She tried to keep her tone biting, sarcastic but fell short, the words a little too genuine to be comfortable. “Whatever you say, Steel.”

If Vespa had to choose who made up her family it would be Buddy, every time without hesitation. Siquliak too, for Bud’s sake at least. But if she didn’t have any other choice, she supposed Juno wasn’t the worst addition to the family the love of her life had coerced her into.

~

When the sound of footsteps woke her up, she stumbled out of that cave. The steps were easier to take than they were the day before, even if the scores of dots looked like a particularly gruesome case of chickenpox, Vespa knew she was walking toward Buddy and that made it easy.

At least she could stand, shaky as it was. Juno had to be carried out by Sequliak. He was beginning to burn with foggy heat, his eyes were wild when he opened them and Vespa knew she couldn’t be much better with the slick sweat dripping from her fingers and forehead.

Still, they were brought to the med bay. It was a strange feeling to be on the other side— patient instead of medic. Bud was at her side again,  _ finally _ . 

She was allowed to miss her girlfriend. They had already spent too much time apart, and any longer than they absolutely had to always felt like another year between them, years of which there were already far too many.

Buddy gave her a look when the Carte Blanche lifted off toward Hyperion and they shot off toward one of the city hospitals. Vespa tore her eyes away from Juno’s bed, where the detective was stirring uneasily in his sleep, eyepatch long since soaked through and then removed as his forehead sheened under the lights.

“Is that concern for our resident, detective, Darling?” Bud smiled and Vespa stopped blinking for the duration of it, admiring the beautiful curve of her mouth. “Glad to see you’ve warmed up to Mars and its inhabitants a little.” Vespa fought past clumsy lips and responded. 

“Yeah, well,” she allowed, “Every planet has its exceptions.” Something struck her as odd in the sentence and then she groaned. “ _ Bud _ .  _ Buddy _ , I love you, but… warmed up to? C’mon. Spare me— I’m already in a hospital bed.”

When Buddy Aurinko laughed, the universe righted itself. She laughed clumsily, unlike every other part of herself, the second ‘ha’ coming out much louder than the first.

“Of course, my Vespa.” She smiled at that, not entirely meaning to, but not stopping the spread of it over her face. Because when Vespa Ilkay was Buddy’s, she wasn’t the Board of Fresh Starts’, or her father’s, or the infamous assassin. Vespa was Buddy Aurinko’s girlfriend, and that was really the only thing she ever wanted to be.

**Author's Note:**

> It was so funny writing this, cause Nureyev’s internal monologue is almost always just  
> Nureyev: luvjunoluvjunoluvjuno  
> Vespa: Who is this whiny bitch?  
> She’s just so unimpressed by him. It’s hilarious
> 
> I'm @themagicmistress on Tumblr!


End file.
